Archive: Opinions

A few months ago Ted Laux told me he was surprised that no young people came to a meeting about the Lansing Town Center.  He said that he thought that people with more future to live in Lansing should be more interested in having a say in what that future would be like.  I hadn't thought about it before he mentioned it, but he is right.  Most of the people who attended that meeting and a second one a few weeks ago were at least in their 40s, and most older than that.

Despite the aches and pains and exterior manifestations that come with age, most people still feel like kids on the inside.  I do, although I sometimes wonder whether it isn't time that I grow up.  I attribute my enthusiasm for a future Lansing to that illusion of youth.  While my bottom line is that I miss the Sure Fine, the visions of a town center that physically links and strengthens our community in tangible ways gets me juiced.

Then I remember that it is going to take years, probably decades before we see something like the vision that is being formed now.  I'll probably be dead or living in the home before it actually happens.  Oddly that doesn't dampen my enthusiasm, but it does make me wonder where the younger people are in this process and why they don't demonstrate that they have a stake in the process.  Because they do, and much more of one than I do.

Molding your community is an exciting process.  Most of the people who do it in Lansing are volunteers who work on committees with professionals to take the town, step by step, into its future.  Community members (not so much young ones) came up with some fantastic ideas, including a system of walkways that join key features of the community from the town center to Myers Park, the RINK, and to a new park that is envisioned to the north of the Town Hall square.

Meanwhile town officials are working on a new sewer project that will help push development into the town center, once the infrastructure is available and affordable.  The Lansing Recreational Pathways Committee is simultaneously working to identify the long term potential of trails in the town.  Another group is working on the problem of getting high speed Internet into rural Lansing areas.

These groups are providing exciting and wonderful visions for what the town could become.  But I wonder how many will actually see the full realization of their ideas.  With money tight, there isn't a lot of tax money to spend on the projects.  The town can require developers to include green space in projects, but joining them into a cohesive whole is a challenge for a community that wants to keep taxes low.  So it becomes a matter of planning for the chance that grants, stimulus monies, or other funding will come available.

That's why younger Lansing people should want to be involved.  I'd be happy with a small market.  That's just me.  Younger residents might want tennis courts, a community pool, or other features that I wouldn't use or care about.  They should get to have them, but those things are never going to happen unless that demographic speaks up and owns their piece of the process.  In doing so they will own their piece of their own future.

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